Heliatek receives $27 million for development of organic solar cells

Heliatek GmbH, a pioneer in the field of organic solar cells, isreceiving $27 million (€18 million) in a second round of financingunder the lead of the pan-European venture capital firm WellingtonPartners.

Heliatekwill be utilizing the new funding primarily to build an initialproduction facility in Dresden. In this step and right through to massproduction, the company will be using its proprietary tandem technologyto efficiently produce, flexible and very lightweight PV modules on afilm substrate.

Their weight will be merely 500 grams persquare meter, instead of today’s customary 20 kilograms per squaremeter. This will open up a forward-looking market for mobileapplications, for architectural solutions and for independentlysupplying regions with weak infrastructures.

“We believe thattruly break-through 3rd generation technologies that bring PV wellbeyond grid parity will be the success stories of the future, and wethink Heliatek is excellently positioned to capture that opportunity,"explained Bart Markus, General Partner of Wellington Partners.

Thisis affirmed by Crispin Leick, Executive Director of RWE InnogyVentures: “We want to help to commercialize this innovative technologythrough our venture capital investment in Heliatek. Organicphotovoltaics has the potential to deliver considerable cost savingsgiven the low amount of energy used and the unlimited availability ofthe raw materials."

Speaking on behalf of the other investors,Dr. Alexander Flaig, Vice President Corporate Research at Robert Bosch,notes: “Over the course of the past two years, Heliatek has madeimpressive progress in terms of the efficiency and service life of itsorganic solar cells. The time has now come to also show just howcost-efficiently these cells can be manufactured under industrialconditions. This round of financing will enable the company to executethis important step – from the research laboratory to an initialproduction facility.”

Heliatek CEO Dr. Andreas Rückemannexplains: “With this new round of financing, we have now created anopportunity to take advantage of our technology edge in thisforward-looking market in order to be one of the first suppliers toramp up a production operation. We are very proud that we have beenable to receive the support of the industrial company Bosch and theventure capital investors RWE Innogy Ventures, BASF Venture Capital,Wellington Partners, eCAPITAL and Technologiegründerfonds Sachsen.”

Heliatek was advised on this round of financing by the leading European investment bank for technology companies GP Bullhound.

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